Glenn Beck Developing ‘Edison vs. Tesla’ Movie

The story of Thomas Edison taking all the glory while creative genius Nikola Tesla died alone and in poverty in the New Yorker Hotel room that was his final home certainly seems like a great premise for a movie, but can Glenn Beck be trusted to do it justice? Gizmodo gushes excitedly at the prospect:

Former Fox News TV personality Glenn Beck is really sick of talking about politics. So what rustles his jimmies these days? The mythologized feud between Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison. Beck even has a movie in production about Edison that he hopes will “expose the truth” about this “bad man.”

Another film will “expose the truth” about Thomas Edison, a villain Beck thinks has gotten a break from historians and whose real story demonstrates our flawed understanding of the 20th century. Though remembered as “this nice, kind of, good old Thomas,” Beck explains, “he was really a bad man who was electrocuting animals.” Edison,”was absolutely on the wrong end, and luckily for him the story ended happily with his name being taken off his own company and given to GE,” he says. “And all the people he tried to destroy and screw — he was screwed.” Beck is getting animated. “In the end, he was screwed, and with the same tactics he used on everybody else. I think that’s the story that needs to be told about Thomas Edison: He was a bad man.”

The National Review post fails to explain if this is going to be a documentary or a dramatic feature, but really, either one is going to be amazing.

Beck doesn’t explicitly call out who screwed Edison nor who Edison screwed, but judging by theDecember 2, 2013 episode of his web show, we can guess there will be plenty of Tesla-worship.

Beck raves about a fantasy world where Tesla’s experiments in wireless energy have been embraced and brought to market:

My iPad would never go dry. I’d never have to plug it in because he would just be sending electricity concentrated through the air. Well, when he started these experiments, it worked so well that they kicked them out of Colorado.

Leaving aside the fact that Tesla was never “kicked out” of Colorado, I can’t imagine that sending concentrated electricity through the air would go over that well with Beck’s conspiracy-minded crowd…

The very best book, with the most respectful and rounded profile of Nikola Tesla, is Empires of Light by historian, Jill Jonnes. (Really outstanding writing on Ms. Jonnes’ part.)

The next best book, although not as well-rounded a profile, and there was one item I disagreed with but it escapes my memory right now, is Lightning, which was written as fictional, but is quite accurate (by Jean Echenoz).

Interesting to note that the greatest technical genius in American history, and one of the greatest of all history, Tesla was forced to work day labor for several years (different versions run from one and a half to four years — it seems four years may be accurate).

I cannot believe Beckerhead is doing this, just hope he doesn’t screw it up too badly!

Have we at last found the film that historians will look to to sum up our NSA-panopticon-surveillance-paranoia era? Fateful Findings is a low-budget "paranormal thriller" produced and written by one...